Students’ project for instrumentation and automation of a manually operated torsion testing machine with educational purposes

From the pedagogical point of view, a very interesting initiative for engineering schools is to engage their students in design, renovation, or maintenance projects of laboratory equipment. It allows engineering students to work on real projects, with all the difficulties that arise in field testing, and to gain hands-on experience from the confrontation of practical situations and challenges, which presents positive outcomes regarding learning objectives and program appreciation. This article presents an engineering project developed by students for instrumentation and automation of an old manually operated torsion testing machine, for execution of accurate mechanical tests and reliable physical replications of real-world industrial processes on laboratory scale. An electrical resistive furnace is incorporated into the torsion testing machine to also allow hot torsion tests with controlled temperature. In addition to students’ skills development, this project yields a completely functional instrumented and automated torsion testing machine, with a controlled temperature electrical furnace and other features that have been used in Bachelor, Master, and Doctoral projects, laboratory classes, and new research.